Valentina Tereshkova
Cosmonaut (Soviet Astronaut)
(b.1937)
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born in a village 265 km (165 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia (then part of the Soviet Union). Her father, who had been a tractor driver, was killed in World War II. Times were tough for Valentina, her mother, and two siblings. Valentina left school at 16 to work in the same factory as her mother. However, she also continued to study by taking distance-learning courses.
Valentina’s passion was skydiving. She joined her local flying club and made her first parachute jump at the age of 22. She trained every weekend. She performed jumps by day and by night, over grasslands, mountains, and rivers.
In 1961 Valentina applied to join the Soviet space program, which had plans to put the first woman in space. There were more than 400 applicants, but Valentina was one of the 5 who were chosen, thanks to her skydiving skills. The other 4 were all test pilots. The young women had months of training, followed by exams to see which of them would go into space.
“Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky.”
In 1963 26-year-old Valentina was chosen for the mission. Her spacecraft Vostok 6 launched in June. Valentina stayed in space for three days and orbited Earth 48 times. During the flight, she took photographs of our planet which later helped scientists to understand features of its atmosphere. She also communicated via radio with fellow cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky. He was flying solo, too, on Vostok 5, which had been launched two days before Valentina’s spacecraft.
Valentina returned to Earth a national hero, an international icon for women’s equality, and a campaigner for peace. She has often spoken about how humbling and overwhelming it was to see Earth from space—“a planet at once so beautiful and so fragile.”
Valentina was asked to lead an all-female crew on Voskhod 2 in 1965, but the mission was called off for technical reasons. Four years later, the female cosmonaut unit was broken up. To her disappointment, Valentina never went into space again. Instead, she has held many high-level jobs in government. She travels the world giving talks, opening exhibitions, and calling for women to be given the same opportunities as men.
Valentina has received the UN Peace Medal and many other awards, been made a “Hero of the Soviet Union,” and had a moon crater and minor planet named after her. If there is ever a Mars mission, Valentina wants to be part of it: “I am ready,” she has promised.
Ruchi Sanghvi
Engineer
(b.1982)
Born in Pune, India, Ruchi Sanghvi was told by her father early in life that business was “a man’s world.” Determined to prove him wrong, Ruchi went to study in the United States. Even though she had never even touched a computer, she studied electrical computer engineering. She was one of five female students on the course out of a total of 150.
In 2005 Ruchi joined Facebook as its first female software engineer. She introduced some of its most successful and innovative features, such as the News Feed. Ruchi went on to found her own company, become an investor, and co-found the campaign group FWD.us. The group aims to improve immigration procedures, promote better education, and champion advances in technology.
Wang Zhenyi
Scientist, Astronomer, and Poet
(1768–97)
Unlike most girls in 18th-century China, Wang Zhenyi was lucky enough to receive an education. She grew up in eastern China with her father, grandfather, and grandmother, who were all scholars. They introduced Wang to mathematics, medicine, geography, and astronomy. Later she also learned archery, riding, and martial arts.
Wang wrote more than a dozen books in her short lifetime. She studied the moon, sun, and their eclipses, rewrote mathematics texts to make them easier to understand, and also wrote her own poetry. For centuries her work was not widely appreciated, but in 2004 a crater on Venus was named after her.
Mária Telkes
Scientist and inventor
(1900–95)
Born and educated in Budapest, Hungary, Mária Telkes moved to the United States in 1924 and took a job as a biochemist. She helped to invent a device that could record brain waves. From the late 1930s Mária focused on solar energy and how to harness it. She developed one of her most important inventions during World War II—a solar-powered contraption that could turn seawater into drinking water.
After the war, Mária worked with architect Eleanor Raymond to create the first house that was heated by solar energy. Throughout her career, Mária continued to develop pioneering solar technologies, including stoves and heaters. In 1952 she received the first Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award.
Ada Yonath
Biochemist and Crystallographer
(b.1939)
Ada Yonath was born in Jerusalem, Israel, the daughter of Polish immigrants. The family was poor and Ada’s father died when she was 11, so she had to help out a lot at home. Even so, she graduated from school and attended university, becoming a biochemist.
In the 1970s Ada began to study ribosomes—small but important proteins inside animal cells. She was told that it was impossible to see them in any detail, so she came up with a new technique. She found that she could take X-ray images of the atoms inside ribosomes if she chilled them to incredibly low temperatures. In 2000 Ada and her team were able to announce their success. Ada’s work has been incredibly important for the development of new antibiotics. In 2009 Ada and two of her fellow scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Grace Hopper
Computer Scientist and Naval Officer
(1906–92)
She was known as “Amazing Grace,” the “First Lady of Software,” and the “Mother of Computing.” Without Grace Hopper’s decades of work, computers would still need highly trained professionals to program them, and groundbreaking scientific leaps such as spaceflight might never have happened.
Grace was born in New York City, USA. Her father, who owned an insurance company, wanted his daughter to have the same opportunities as his two sons. Grace was privately educated and went on to complete two degrees in mathematics and physics and a PhD in mathematics.
When the United States joined World War II in 1941, Grace wanted to do her bit for the war effort. Her grandfather had been a rear admiral, but she couldn’t join the Navy because of her age. She was accepted into the US Naval Reserve instead. In 1943 Grace was sent to Harvard University, Massachusetts, to take part in a top-secret naval project.
“It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”
The team at Harvard was working on the Mark I, one of the earliest computers. It was designed to perform the long calculations that warships use to fire their weapons accurately. Grace was one of the Mark I’s three programmers and wrote its 561-page instruction manual. She even coined the computing term “bug,” after a moth got stuck in the machine and caused havoc.
In 1949 Grace went to work on UNIVAC I, the first commercial electronic computer. She also developed the first compiler—the component that translated the numbers and symbols fed into a computer into the zeros and ones that told the machine what to do.
In 1955 Grace wrote FLOW-MATIC, the first computer language that used English words and phrases instead of complex mathematical symbols. It was the basis for COBOL—a commonly accepted language that could program computers made by different manufacturers. Grace advised the committee that decided on COBOL and promoted it tirelessly. By 1970 it was the world’s most widely used computer language.
Grace was still working in her sixties and seventies. She standardized the many computer languages being used in the Navy and was one of the first women to reach the rank of rear admiral. She finally retired in 1986, just a few months before her 80th birthday.
In 1991 US President George Bush Senior awarded Grace the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. It was just one of many awards and prizes given to
this groundbreaking computer scientist.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Experimental Physicist
(1912–97)
Chien-Shiung Wu was fortunate enough to attend one of the first schools in China that allowed girls. Her parents had founded the school and were teachers there.
When Chien-Shiung was ten years old, she went to a boarding school 80 km (50 miles) away. She loved physics and mathematics and went on to study both subjects at university. She graduated from the National Central University in Nanjing in 1934 with the highest marks in her year.
Chien-Shiung decided to complete her PhD in the United States. She arrived in San Francisco in 1936 and was offered a place at Berkeley, California, which had a world-famous physics department. Chien-Shiung’s supervisor had invented a particle accelerator and she used it to split uranium and xenon atoms and produce radioactive isotopes. (An isotope is a version of an element that has the usual number of proton particles but a different number of neutrons.)
Chien-Shiung met fellow physicist Luke Yuan at Berkeley, and they married in 1942.
In 1944 Chien-Shiung went to work on the Manhattan Project, which was building the first atomic bomb. She was part of the team turning uranium metal into enriched uranium—radioactive isotopes that could fuel a nuclear reaction. She also helped to fix a problem with one of the project’s nuclear reactors.
In 1945 Chien-Shiung became a professor at Columbia University, New York City. She became an expert on beta decay—a particular kind of radioactivity during which beta rays are released.
“There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes, and that is not going to the lab at all!”
Chien-Shiung’s biggest achievement was disproving the law of conservation of parity—a theory that scientists had believed to be true for decades. Two male colleagues, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, predicted this law did not always apply. In late 1956 Chien-Shiung led a team of scientists to set up her complex and famous Wu Experiment that proved her colleagues were right. In 1957 Lee and Yang were awarded the Nobel Prize for their contribution to particle physics.
Although Chien-Shiung was not a Nobel Prize winner, she received an impressive number of scientific prizes and other distinctions during her lifetime. In 1978 she was the first winner of the Wolf Prize in Physics.
Chien-Shiung retired in 1981 but she continued to travel and give talks on the importance of women in science.
Chapter 3
Artists and Writers
Art is part of being human. It includes visual arts, such as painting, photography, and film; literary arts, including novels, poems, and plays; and performing arts, such as music, drama, and dance. In all its forms, art helps us to explore our identity and express feelings and big ideas.
Great artists can be men or women, but in many cultures success has been easier for men. Women authors have even chosen to write under male names to increase their chance of being published and read. George Eliot’s real name, for example, was Mary Ann Evans.
Being poor can make it harder to be an artist. Having music lessons, going to the ballet, or being able to access lots of books all cost money. As a result, the arts can lack voices from their most disadvantaged members—but thankfully there are exceptions. The women in this chapter are writers, poets, singers, musicians, designers, painters, and actors. Many of them came to their art because they needed to express themselves and their position in society. Being an artist and an activist often go hand in hand. Women have harnessed the power of art to comment on society, challenge wrong or harmful ideas, and nudge or catapult us toward change.
Jane Austen
(1775–1817)
Since the 19th century, Jane Austen has been one of Britain’s most popular novelists. Her works, which include Pride and Prejudice and Emma, have been turned into films and television series many times. Jane’s witty words described life for women in the middle and upper classes and drew out truths that are still relevant to this day.
Leontyne Price
(b.1927)
Soprano singer Leontyne Price was the first African American to be a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, USA. She had to overcome many obstacles. Leontyne’s 1961 debut at the Met was greeted with more than 40 minutes of non-stop applause.
Nina Simone
Musician, Singer, and Activist
(1933–2003)
Nina Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon) was from North Carolina, USA. Her mother was a Baptist minister and her father was a maintenance person and preacher. Nina was only three years old when she started playing songs on the organ in her mother’s church.
Recognizing her incredible talent, Nina’s parents sent her to piano lessons. She was a natural and decided to become the first black classical pianist. Her home town raised money to fund her time at high school and then Juilliard, New York City’s leading school for music and dance.
Nina grew up at a time of terrible racial discrimination. Slavery had been abolished in 1865, but many states, especially southern ones, had segregation. Black citizens weren’t allowed to share public spaces with white people. The civil rights movement in the 1960s worked to change this through peaceful protests and campaigning.
Being exposed to unfairness and racism throughout her life shaped Nina as an artist. When she was 12 years old, she gave her first-ever piano recital. Her parents, who were seated in the front row, were asked to move to make space for white audience members. Nina refused to play until her parents were given back their seats.
“You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”
Nina gave up her hopes of becoming a classical pianist in 1951, when she was rejected by the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. It was a disappointment, but it led to Nina’s amazing career as one her century’s most celebrated musicians and singers.
In 1954 Nina started working as a musician in a bar. She adopted the stage name “Nina Simone” to keep her mother from finding out—she wouldn’t have approved! Nina’s rich voice and her soulful versions of much-loved songs made her a popular fixture.
Nina released her first album in 1958. It was a big success but she had sold the creative rights to the record company. None of the profits went to her. In the 1960s Nina joined the fight for civil rights and sang songs at rallies.
Frustrated by the racism in the United States, Nina spent most of the 1970s in Barbados, Africa, and Europe. In 1987 she reached a new generation when her recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” accompanied a high-profile perfume advertisement. In 1991 Nina published her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You. She spent the last 10 years of her life in southern France. Thanks to her extraordinary voice and accomplished piano playing, Nina has inspired many young musicians.
Sonita Alizadeh
Rap Artist and Activist
(b.1997)
In 2014 the film-maker Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami started documenting the lives of refugees in her native Iran. She met a teenager called Sonita Alizadeh, who had fled her home country of Afghanistan when war broke out there. Rokhsareh began filming Sonita. As a result, she caught on camera the moment when Sonita’s mother said she had found a husband to buy her. Although the sale of brides is common in Afghanistan, Sonita was shocked that it was going to happen to her. She was just 16 years old. She expressed her fear and despair in a rap song called “Brides for Sale.” Rokhsareh filmed the video for the song. When it was uploaded to YouTube, “Brides for Sale” went viral.
“To the women of my beloved country : believe in yourselves. You are strong. Speak up about your dreams and your goals every day so that everyone knows that you exist.”
Rokhsareh paid Sonita’s family to delay the marriage and helped her travel to Utah, USA, where a high school was offering her a scholarship. The Strongheart Group, which is dedicated to social change, also gave Sonita financial support. She continues to raise awareness of child mar
riage.
Rokhsareh’s film Sonita was released in 2016 and won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Joan Armatrading
Musician, Singer, and Songwriter
(b.1950)
When Joan Armatrading was 14, she saw a second-hand guitar in a shop window and begged her mother to buy it. Her mother swapped two baby strollers for it, and Joan became the proud owner of her first guitar. She taught herself to play and started writing songs. Within two years she was playing her first gig.
Born on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts, Joan moved to Birmingham, UK, with her family when she was seven years old. Her musical talent was evident early on, when she started playing her mother’s piano as a young child. Once she discovered the guitar, she embarked on a lifelong career as a singer, songwriter, and musician.
“You don’t have to be rich and famous. You just have to be an ordinary person, doing extraordinary things.”
In 1972 Joan released her debut album and became the first black British female artist to find success with her own material. Since then she has released more than 20 solo albums. Her records have gone gold (sold 500,000 copies) and platinum (sold a million). She has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and two Brits.
101 Awesome Women Who Changed Our World Page 5
